So, he’s running. Or he can.
On July 7, Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court weighed in on whether senior officials who are subject to term limits – like the president – could be re-elected or re-appointed to those same positions under the new constitution, which went into effect on July 1.
Their conclusion: yes.
Kazakh President Kassym Jomart Tokayev is not the first president in Central Asia to benefit from creative constitutional reinterpretations in the wake of a referendum. Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, was elected four times despite the two-term limit in the Uzbek Constitution. Via referendums, Karimov’s administration moved elections to extend his term, and in other instances tinkered with the length of the presidential term, followed by an argument that such an adjustment re-set the clock on the number of terms.
Kazakhstan has done much the same.
